


Just in Lockstep

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [84]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Brothers, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24269257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Bacara and Neyo crash on a Separatist planet with no backup but each other.  They'll make do.
Series: Soft Wars [84]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 46
Kudos: 398





	Just in Lockstep

**Author's Note:**

> I had a mind that this was going to be more action-y than it ended up being. Oh well.

“Engine’s shot,” Bacara hears. He blinks his eyes open in time to see Neyo step out of their lightly smoking star hopper and easily drop the eight feet to the leaf-covered ground. “Comms are down, tracker _might not_ be down but the bulkhead’s melted slag so I wouldn’t go putting all my rounds in _that_ one mag. Backup engine went with the main, who wired _that_ and can me and my carbine have a word with them? Coolant’s leaked over half of Seppie space, neither of the void-brains on this ship brought their proper karking shells and the fresher’s all out of the majram-scented soap.

Bacara wheezes a huff out of his aching chest. “And what’s the bad news?” he croaks. Neyo spins. His grin is just the edge of too relieved to be his usual wryly mocking.

“Well looks like I won’t be inheriting that jacket anymore, that counts.”

Bacara scoffs as much as he’s able. Every breath throbs. “You’d better be planning to bury me in this thing or I will haunt you every time you try to frip.” Rex got it for him from somewhere. Somehow. It had been dropped by a resupply fly-over, tagged with Bacara’s name and noticeably absent from the manifest. It is the softest leatheris Bacara has ever touched. He’d very possibly be willing to kill a man for this jacket.

“Clever.” Now that he has an audience Neyo’s chatter cuts off, his actions flip to something vaguely approaching professional but sharper. Bacara had worried him, he thinks. His hands aren’t quite gentle as they prod perfunctorily around Bacara’s face and neck. Something to the back right of Bacara’s head throbs and stings. Neyo’s fingers come away dotted in blood.

“Headache?” He asks. He flips on an ancient looking med analyzer and runs it from between Bacara’s eyes down to his legs. “Nausea? Blurry vision?” Bacara knows the diagnosis before he even confirms. “Concussion,” Neyo proclaims. “Bruised ribs. But it looks like you didn’t slice up any of the meat bits.” Could have been worse, Bacara thinks. He wasn’t looking forward to lying on a jungle floor with broken bones, even if what little of it Bacara can see looks like a very nice jungle, as jungles go. A lot of trees, except where their ship has scored a trench.

“We have a med pack. Such as it is. We have two options. Option A is a single-use X-dose bacta pouch.”

Bacara tries to focus on Neyo’s face and frowns. “Are you suggesting we waste an X-dose when no one has lost a limb or is currently bleeding out?”

Neyo grunts. “Are you asking whether or not I’m considering using our medical supplies to treat the GAR Marine Commander’s Traumatic Brain Injury?” he asks.

Bacara shoots his sometimes-friend, oft-times irritant an annoyed look. “I’m barely concussed. Save the bacta.”

“A concussion is a TBI. You have ‘barely’ traumatically injured your brain.”

Neyo’s developed a taste for amateur medical diagnosis recently. It’s coincided with increased reporting from Torrent. It was maybe cute, the first five times he produced a list of Injuries Vaughn Could Have Gotten. Maybe.

“And option B?” Bacara snips. Neyo glares from the corner of his eyes but holds up a packaged syringe and a vial of softly glowing green liquid with a grimace of vague disgust.

“We also have a couple of rounds of kolto shots.” Strange, Bacara thinks, who even uses _kolto_ anymore? Bacta is ten times as effective and didn’t come from one single species of fish only found on Manaan. Still, meds are meds.

“Why wasn’t that option A?”

“Well, the instructions are in butchered Basic. And the expiration date is in a reference system I’ve never seen before. This could possibly predate the Republic.”

Okay, that is not the _best_ news.

It’s clear that Neyo already knows Bacara’s decision. It’s also clear he heartily disapproves. “If I die from the shady off-brand drugs you can have the jacket,” Bacara allows.

Neyo scoffs, but he sanitizes a spot on Bacara’s neck, preps the syringe and administers the drug. It’s professionally done, minimum contact needed.

Half an hour, Bacara thinks he remembers, is standard bare minimum monitoring after first exposure to an unknown drug. That’s about how long it takes for kolto to run fully through the system too. Neyo settles beside him, just barely not touching. Bacara can feel the heat of his side. He’s not sure if he’s cold, or Neyo is running too hot. It’s two attempts before his fumbling knocks his knuckles against Neyo’s knee. “You okay?” His voice has a little bit of a slur he doesn’t like. He’s not sure if that’s the kolto or the concussion.

He sees it before Neyo says anything, that he’s going to duck deep behind sarcasm to hide his worry. Bacara squeezes this knee in warning. The other man knocks his hand away.

He looks smaller, outside of his shell. It’s been about a day, or a little over at this point, and Bacara still finds himself surprised by it. They could hardly have taken their shells with them for an undercover mission. They’re both wearing durasteel plated low-profile armor under civvies, a product of Naboo and distributed sparingly for emergencies, but it’s got none of the bulk of their shells.

A pair of traders don’t draw eyes, and them being heavily armed in Sep space is just a sign of the times.

Neyo looks smaller, younger. More vulnerable.

“I’m not injured,” he lies. He rolls his eyes at Bacara’s admonishing squeeze, shifts just that little bit further away so Bacara’s hand slips off and only the barest ends of his fingertips can reach him. “Scrapes only, nothing serious.” Bacara’s not sure he believes him. He lets it drop; there’s no point in pushing. Neyo will either tell him, or he won’t.

“How long can we stay here?”

There’s something complicated in the other man’s face. “A little longer,” he settles on, and that’s a lie too.

Bacara struggles to remember, but he doesn’t think they were shot down. There was… _something_. Neyo was avoiding an electrical storm that was standard high up in Udiraar V’s atmosphere. They’d. Did they hit something? Bacara doesn’t think so either.

He remembers Neyo cursing. That stood out. He usually only ever cursed at Bacara. And then they fell. Plummeted. Bacara had been scrambling to strap in. Then a pulse of bright light and a crinkle of electricity, then nothing.

Whatever happened, this is a Sep planet and something caused their ship to go down. It’d be better not to be around, when someone inevitably came looking.

Bacara rolls to hands and knees, waits out the roil of nausea that bubbles up his throat. Neyo watches, silent, dark-eyed, thin-lipped judgment. Bacara finds his feet, finds a tree to brace himself through a second round. His stomach threatens to cramp with the effort. “Lets move,” he grits, when he can.

He’s not surprised when Neyo makes a point of rolling upwards, sinuous and effortless and hands-free, in deliberate counterpoint. “As The Marine commands,” he drawls with no little venom.

He knocks shoulders roughly with Bacara as he passes. It nearly takes Bacara’s feet back out from under him.

It’s how he shows he cares, Bacara reminds himself again. Picks at your weaknesses until you cover them. He has to remind himself often.

They divvy up their supplies in silence. A surprising amount of it survived, silent testament to Neyo’s piloting skills Bacara thinks. Bacara wouldn’t have even tried for a ground landing, if what he remembers of glances of the ship’s instruments is accurate. He’d have parked them right in the drink, and they’d be having an exponentially more miserable day right now.

He swaps their packs.

“What,” Neyo snaps. “Your Boyfriend Bag too heavy for you now?”

“I can’t see straight,” Bacara retorts with practiced equanimity. “I can’t use most of that if I can’t aim.”

It’s not a bribe exactly. It’s the truth that there’s still an intermittent corona clouding the edges of Bacara’s vision, though that’s fading fast. If the kolto does eventually off him, it at least cleared up the concussion first. But they _have_ to move. They can’t afford to wait here too much longer and Bacara is mostly mobile. It doesn’t matter what Neyo’s opinions on the matter are, it’s the best move.

But Bacara isn’t too proud to say that he dislikes when Neyo goes silent and distant. Doubly so, when it’s over Bacara’s state of health. He’s fine, he’s functional and he’s accepted that he and Neyo have different standards for what that means. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel just that edge of burning shame when Neyo stares through him for long, alarming moments. Parting with some of Rex’s latest round of care package goodies is worth it.

Besides. Bacara really _wouldn’t_ trust himself to use those in his state. Torrent-produced equipment is… uniquely ill-advised. Effective, but designed with a blatant disregard for common karking sense. Neyo’s sort of thing, come to think of it.

“There’s an armory in here,” Neyo whistles, impressed.

Well, Bacara thinks as the other man goes nearly head-first digging into the pack, that didn’t take much persuading at all.

“Are these those bouncy bombs everyone’s pissed about? Stars, did he send you two dozen?!” Neyo’s grin crinkles the thick lines on either side of his face, one covering his designation tattoo the other for balancing the look. “Hell, Marine, you spent those five days in hyperspace doing some _real_ thorough maintenance huh? Heard you basically have to murder to get these anymore, ‘Alor bein’ a hardass about them.”

“ _You_ could probably just ask nicely,” Bacara points out. “And promise to give _thorough feedback_ after.”

Captain Vaughn is just so eager to get Neyo’s opinion on everything. Bacara’s followed chat with the same kind of morbid curiosity of watching a cage fight where only one contender is armed. The outcome becomes really, bloodily obvious very quickly.

“Get karked,” Neyo says sweetly, and his is not a face made for blushing at all.

“Got a rash, Spy?” Bacara retorts just as smoothly. “You’ve gone blotchy. It’s concerning.”

Neyo nails him in the chin with a ration bar. Nuur flavored, the one that tastes like toothpaste but at least not like duracrete. Bacara’s been forgiven for his egregious sin of standing up when Neyo thinks he should have lain down a bit longer. It sticks against Bacara’s teeth, like all ration bars do, but doesn’t leave him feeling dehydrated.

They’d both been trained roughly similarly, though both the Journeyman Protectors and the Deathwatch trainers would have been furious at any hint of comparison. Bacara’s the lucky one he thinks, in the grand accounting of everything. Neyo had the misfortune of being the smarter one, faster, more impressive. More eye-catching to Priest and his ilk. Bacara had been the kind of solid the Journeyman Protectors wanted in their blunt instrument. Neyo had been the kind of sharp the Deathwatch wanted in their monsters.

Both groups had made the same mistake. Rare as it was, they still left Bacara and Neyo together too often.

“Group one,” Bacara says, and Neyo doesn’t bother to nod.

“Jacket,” Neyo says, but Bacara is already stripping out of it. “Down, if you think you can get up afterwards.” Bacara will never admit it to him, but sitting, with a tree at his back, is probably the best he’s felt since he’s opened his eyes. Neyo glares idly like he’s well aware.

Group one of gear storage is 'on your own body' and Bacara and Neyo have been trained to know it's the only thing you can rely on. They’ve been together enough that they’re comfortable relying on group two, 'carried by a partner'. Groups three through five, in various bags and in vehicles, are luxuries. Go-bags have a habit of becoming leave-behind-in-a-panic bags with distressing regularity.

Bacara’s a little ashamed they hadn’t geared up before dropping out of hyperspace. “I won’t tell Jet if you won’t.” Neyo snorts, taps his own thigh in battlesign agreement.

Jet’s a valuable ally. He also has this weird habit of assuming Bacara and Neyo are perfect soldiers, and thus any of their missteps should be celebrated as symptoms of terminal humanity. Loudly celebrated, to whatever audience he can find.

“We’re about 15 kliks southeast of target,” Neyo reports as he unpiles their packs and separates everything into need and want stacks, and the need stacks between them. “I got eyes on, right before we hit a pulse shield and shorted out.” He doesn’t ask permission before knee-walking into Bacara’s space, getting fingers under the clasps of his harness and tugging them open.

Their harnesses are their joint design. Neyo’s is smooth, synth-leatheris he’s picked up somewhere on one of his rotations back across the line and cut by WAC-47. Bacara’s is coarse; Rothax’s hand-made work, from the hide of something mammalian with leathery wings Bacara had downed a few cycles back. They’ve got pockets and connectors and snaps in the same place, optimized for their style, for where they both tend to reach when going for weapons.

Neyo bats his hands away when he tries to help snap munitions in place. “Focus on not hurling on me Marine,” he snaps. “If I murder you in a Seppie jungle my chances of making it with Vaughn plummet.” He’s unnecessarily rough, checking the give of the upper chest strap and snapping it against Bacara’s skin.

“If you kill me WAC is the only person you can bitch at.” Bacara doesn’t have to remind him WAC-47 turns his auditory processors off if he decides Neyo’s gone on too long. Neyo clicks his tongue, but doesn’t argue. Point, Bacara. Still in the lead. Neyo slaps his hands away again, even though it’s clear Bacara’s steady enough to help and this would actually go faster if he did.

The bouncy bombs are split between them, and the magazines of explosive slugs too. Neyo gives him the blandest look when he fishes out the pistol they fire from, ‘Captain Rex’s Favorite’ engraved on the side.

Bacara refuses to feel shame. Somewhere, one of Rex’s ARC brats thinks he’s clever. Bacara hopes it’s one Rex’s An’ka is geared to feed their own offal in spars.

It’s his turn to send a bland look when it turns out the backup pistol is engraved ‘The Angry Baby Bro Also Vaughn Says Hi’.

“They’re all idiots,” Neyo decides. Bacara can’t argue that. “I’m older.”

“You spent every night of our childhood praying you would wake up older. It’s the thing we both know you failed miserably at.”

Neyo scoffs, a bit pleased. “Careful Marine you’re edging close to a compliment.”

“Edging? Why bother? We both know you’re my dearest and longest-held friend.”

Point Bacara, again. Neyo truly is a hideous blusher. Bacara hopes, for his sake, that Captain Vaughn at least has the bad taste to find it cute, if they ever meet.

“That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard today,” Neyo snaps. “And I had to listen to you choke back bile. Pathetic.” He stomps away, stiff-backed indignant and so very, very pleased. Bacara smirks for a moment, while his back is turned.

Something chimes in the depths of Neyo’s pack. Two chirps sing merrily before he can leap at it and slam it off.He swallows, refuses to look back at Bacara.

A timer, Bacara knows immediately. Sounding off the half an hour of required observation after dispensing an unknown drug. He recalls how slowly Neyo had split their gear, how slowly he’d packed each of their harnesses himself.

Clever, clever little Neyo.

Bacara pushes himself to his feet and his head is clear.

“Orders, Marine?” Neyo scrabbles with his harness and it takes exactly all of his attention. Bacara spares him a smile, while he can’t see it to be offended.

He shrugs back into his jacket, fills those pockets with ration bars and one of their last three kolto shots. He leaves the others for Neyo, and the bacta. Half of everything less vital goes back into the pack.

They’re making a new type of droid in that factory 15 km from where they landed. Vos is on his way back to Coruscant with the intel, but he’d made a detour to Valor’s posting as he went. Taking this would be a coup for the Republic, he’d said. The weapons assembly line alone would be invaluable, even discounting ability to use the droids themselves without a CIS command ship. This was a target too good to turn down.

They’d at minimum spend thousands of clone lives to get it, by Vos’ reckoning, but with the credits they’d save on munitions manufacturing they could afford to buy more.

Vos plans to tell Coruscant the factory was destroyed by unknown forces. He’d really appreciate if that ended up being true.

“Seems to me that that pulse shield and that factory very likely have a lot to do with each other,” Bacara muses and there’s the beginning of something wild pulling at the corners of Neyo’s mouth. “Be willing to bet they’d have comms we could use, to call for a pick-up too.”

Even if Jet would mock them mercilessly for likely the rest of the war. Bacara will be sure to tell him Neyo was flying.

“I don’t know Marine. I only got a little bit of a look at em but they didn’t seem like the sharing type.”

Bacara raises a judgmental eyebrow. “Is that how Spies get things done? Asking nicely? How inefficient.”

Neyo giggles in that rattling, unsettling way of his that portends bad decisions and goading Bacara into following along in his excesses. He totters over to snatch up the rest of his gear and bangs his shoulder heavily into Bacara’s as he does. “Torrent has been a terrible influence on you,” he cheers with devilish glee.

“That’s rancor shit and you know it.”

Their childhood, such as they spent together, was more accurately recalled wreathed in flame than not. And most often it was Neyo holding the match, with that same, too-wide smile.

They stare each other down, Neyo’s eyes unblinking and his smile getting wider. Bacara huffs and gives in with what’s left of his dignity.

“I may now be a little more inclined to pyromatic problem solving,” he allows and Neyo cackles.

“You treat that boy right, you hear me Bacara! You cherish him. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”

“You’re definitely doing that wrong. I’m under-socialized and even I know that much.”

Neyo waves with the arm not shoved awkwardly over one of Bacara’s shoulders. “I tried,” he says nonchalantly, as if he’s not even now stunning Bacara. “But either your boy’s smarter than me or he’s dumb as duracrete. It didn’t stick. Didn’t parse a damn word I said. Ended up having a lovely brunch and leaving with a new sniper scope. Doesn’t matter. Let’s go start some fires.”

Bacara grips Neyo’s arm in thanks just shy of as long as he’s learned Neyo will tolerate, and then shrugs out of the hold and into his pack. “Let’s go start only as much fire as we need to accomplish the mission,” he tries.

Neyo looks at him with deep pity.

“We’ll work on that,” he threatens.

They end up starting quite a few more fires than they strictly need to. Jet, when they leap from a chimney stack into his ship, is duly impressed.

He still mocks them mercilessly the whole ride home.


End file.
